How Do Youtreat Your Water Before You Add It?

[odannyboy]

seems like a newbie question,but i wondered what the average person is doing as a water treatment procedure? i treat my tapwater with water conditioner and then add it slowly to my tank(after having removed some water obvoiusly!) my concerns are:
1) the water is cold.somtimes i boil the kettle and mix it with some of the cold to get a warmer temp ( is boiled water bad?)
2) does the water conditioner need any time to work/mix with the tapwater in the bucket?doesnt say anything on the instructions?
3)ive read that chloramine is very hard to remove and not all conditioners will remove it.mine claims it will but anything else i can do?
4) is there any benefit to letting the water stand for a while then adding it.( there is cloramine in my area as far as i know.)

ive been operating this way for around a year with no probs so far.feedback appreciated!

 

[shaz3271]

i mix hot and cold water from the tap till its the right temprature then add my water conditioner, i use seachem prime then add it right into the tanks.

always done it this way with no problems

sharon

 

[fry_lover]

i heat up the water using boiling water from a gas stove (cheaper than boiling a kettle)

I never use the hot tap, hot water from the mains usually will contain levels of copper that some articles i have read (god knows where they are now or the links - sorry) suggest are unsuitable for fish on a long term basis. Its my understanding that most dechlorinators do not necessarily remove this copper

 

[fry_lover]

The Seachem Prime should be added to the NEW WATER not the whole tank, although it wont do any particular harm at the correct doses, there is simply no point adding it to the whole tank, unless you have just set up the new tank or done a 75% water change or something

I use Seachem Prime and (in my opinion from the research i have read) it's either the best or one of the best conditioners as it removes chloramine in a more effective way than many other conditioners

It also quickly neutralises ammonia (up to 0.6 mg/l of ammonia at the regular dose)

It can also reduce nitrite toxicity if used at x5 dose) and apparently this is safe (interestingly Seachem admit that this nitrite de-toxifying effect was discovered by them by ACCIDENT when developing the product LOL)

Despite being vastly superior to many standard conditioners in WHAT it does (especially with regards to ammonia / chloramine) it is much CHEAPER over the life of the bottle you use, as its so concentrated

For a 10-litre bucket of water you only have to add about 0.5ml of Seachem Prime and stir the solution in the bucket

 

[bare bottom]

Carrying this on.

I change 50% tank water a week ( 70 liters ish) using a python. I used to add conditioner for the water i was adding to the tank but thinking about it, should i be dosing for the whole tank as some of the conditioner must be absorbed by the existing tank water?

what do you think?

i also use prime as it's a fantastic product.

 

[fry_lover]

you only need to dose for the "new" water going IN the tank

 

[andywg]

I pour some dechlor into the tank that seems about the right amount for how much I have taken out. I then connect a hose to the cold water tap and fill away. Job done quick and easy. Always useful when changing 40% on a 150 gallon tank.

Most dechlorinators will deal with chlormaine, they might not deal with the ammonia that is left after the sodium thiosulphate reacts with the chlorine in the chloramine molecule. Any established filter will more than be able to cope with this amount of ammonia.

And the above is without going down the path of no dechlorinators that many people have walked with seemingly few problems.

A little tip is to use pond dechlorinator. This is usually far more concentrated than most aquarium ones, and will be at a lower cost.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

pond dechlors fine for big tanks but you try dosing up for a 20% change on a 10g tank with it!!

we do as andy does, stick a bit of dechlor in the tank, hose into the tank and fill it up.

there's a lot of specualtion about how essential dechlor actually is and the ability of a mature tank to decal with chlorine..... perhaps andy or one of the other sciency peeps can explain a bit more, i don't pretend to know the science behind it.

however when i didn't know better i ran my first tank for 3 years without using dechlor, i did have various issues but i think these were because i didn't know much about the nitrogen cycle and stocking, i've never experienced any problems that I could find any link to not dechlorinating. that being said i do use dechlor now however i'm not gonna have a fit if i forget it once or don't mix it in with the water before it goes in the tank.

 

[andywg]

Chlorine will gas off quite quickly in heavily aerated water. Then one must remember that the size of the colonies of bacteria in our filters are far greater than the amounts that exist in the water supplies which the chlorine is aimed at.

The best post on chloramines I have seen was by bignose:

Well, a quick perusal of the scientific literature came up with some rather surprising results.

Firstly, and most surprising to me, the problem ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) growing in water utilities' facilities is becoming a somewhat serious issue. The chloramine does in fact, promote the growth of AOB and NOB, with the consequences -- written is a nice non-threatening way as -- "...the addition of chloramines can lead to biological instability in a drinking water distribution system by promoting the growth of nitrifying bacteria..." and "The resulting reduction in chloramine residual and development of a microbial community in the distribution system lead to water quality deterioration and violation of drinking water regulations." I think that I might very well have put a little more emphasis on violations of the drinking water regulations.

Basically, because the AOB and NOB grow, they excrete other organic compounds allowing other bacteria to grow. At the very minimum, this additional bacteria will require more chloramine to kill it off, but then, more chloramine promotes more growth of AOB and NOB, and I think you can see where this cycle is going... Here is the really bad news, with this extra growth, all that stuff we don't want in there could grow now, like the coliform bacteria (E. coli -- think spinach), and viruses, and Guardia lamblia and so on. All of these are pretty strictly required to be below certain levels by the U.S. EPA, and similarly in other countries.

Secondly, the really interesting part is that in lab test after lab test, the recommended exposure times and concentrations of chloramines do their jobs. The chloramines in the lab kill off all the organics, including the AOB and NOB. However, at the utility side of the issue, nitrification episodes are rather commonplace. One recent study found 63% of U.S. chloramining utilities and 64% of Southern Australian utilities tested positive for nitrifying bacteria.

One hypothesis for the discrepancy between the laboratory studies and operating results is that there are AOB strains
growing in full-scale systems that possess a greater chloramine resistance than those studied in the kinetic experiments. Whether the AOB strains used in earlier kinetic studies are representative of significant strains involved in full-scale nitrification episodes has not been confirmed, since there are no published evaluations of AOB diversity in chloraminated distribution systems.

This quote, and the above ones, from Regan, Harrington, and Noguera: "Ammonia- and Nitrite-Oxidizing Bacterial Communities in a Pilot-Scale Chloraminated Drinking Water Distribution System" Applied and Enviromental Microbiology 2002. The study where the %'s came from was Wolfe et al. "Occurrence of nitrification in chloranimated distribution systems" Journal (American Water Works Association), 1996

In other words, the strains that are in the water utilities have become more resistant to chloramines, and can indeed use the ammonia present as sustenance.

And, back to fishtanks, where do the AOB and NOB come from in the first place? Well, if you used tap water, they probably came from your water utility, and if a resistant strain has grown there... that same chloramine resistant strain is probably now growing in your tank too. The Regan et al. study cited above and Regan et al. "Diversity of nitrifying bacteria in full-scale cloranimated distribution systems" Water Research, 2003, was among the first to use DNA sequencing to distinguish all the different AOB and NOB that are growing. Some of the names should be pretty familiar: AOBs Nitrosospira, Nm. oligotropha and NOBs Nitrospira, Nitrobacter

So, it seems that AOB and so on can become resistant, or at the very least, as mentioned in the above posts, the chloramine levels are certainly not designed to sterilize a colony of bacteria as large in number as we culture in our tanks and so chloraminated water probably is not going to ruin a fishtank.

All that said, I think I am still going to continue to use my conditioner. It is pretty cheap, and better safe than sorry. However, I am not going to fret if I forget, or if a water change is due up and I haven't been to the LFS lately to get a new bottle.

Oh, and of course, I will now be nice and worried about our water supply.

edit- I don't think I can really be classed as one of the "sciency peeps", working as I do pretty close to the law profession.

 

[tmack]

Anyone know of the mechanism by which Prime reduces nitrite toxicity? Is it a chemical reaction, or just that something in the Prime that at 5X the normal dose protects the fish by doing something to the their slime coat or ? I've always wonder about that claim.

 

[odannyboy]

adding dechlorinator to the tank then hosing the water in straight from the mains seems crazy!obviously you guys are doing it and seem more experianced than me ,but am suprised you can get away with it.does is this a common practice.
any body use rainwater?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

exactly the post i was thinking of andy! thanks for finding it

edit- I don't think I can really be classed as one of the "sciency peeps", working as I do pretty close to the law profession.

ha ha ok if you say so

what would you like to be classed as instead? grumpy old fish keeper

adding dechlorinator to the tank then hosing the water in straight from the mains seems crazy!obviously you guys are doing it and seem more experianced than me ,but am suprised you can get away with it.does is this a common practice.
any body use rainwater?

fairly so, pretty much anyone i know with a big tank does it like this. you try mixing up and carting around enough buckets to do water changes on any tank above 60g and tell me this isn't easier!!

 

[Ava_Banana]

When doing my water changes I use my trusty old pond pump and a length of hose.

pond pump on hose goes into tank......water is pumped out into garden (wife normally sticks a few watering cans under the hose to water all the plants).


....pond pump then goes into bucket.........bucket goes under tap in kitchen.........I run warm water (both hot and cold) straight from the tap into the bucket in a constant flow....I then pond pump the water from the bucket into the tank....I monitor the temperature (normally just with my hand)....and treat the water in the bucket as I feel it needs it. I know how much water i am replacing, and put some in with the first bucket load, then some in a little later.

It has made water changes a whole lot easier...........as long as my wife doesn't mind the hose running throughout the house once a week...

 

[Socks]

I change 20% water once per week. I live in an area of the USA with very good water strait of of a well,that is inturn fed by the many natural springs around the house. No additive needed. Just sparkleing clean yummy water.comes out of the tap at a consistant 7.5 ph,soft water.

 

[highfire]

I have just this afternoon done a 30% (or therabouts) waterchange.

I simply fill a 10 litre bucket with water of a similar temperature to the tank straight from the tap, treat with Tetra Aquasafe and slowly pour it in.

My danios love swimming in the bubbles!